Railway tie plate



March 23 1926. 1,577,829

J. KRUTTSCHNITT RAILWAY TIE PLATE Fil ed July 9, 1924 2 Shets-Sheet 1 March 23,1926. 1,577,829

v J. KRUTTSCHNITT RAILWAY TiE PLATE- Filed July 9, 1924 2 Sheets-$i1eet 2 Patented Mar. 23,

r-vars artan err-0 JULIUS KRU'ITSCHNITT, OF NEVI GANAAN, CONNECTICUT; ,E. MINNA KRUTTSCHNITT EXECUTEIX OF SAID JULIUS 'KBUTTSCHNITT, DECEASED.

RAILWAY TIE PLATE.

Application filed July 9,

T 0 all whom it may concern:

Be it known that 1, Jones Knorrsonivrr'r, citizen of the United States, residing at New Canaan, in the county of Fairfieldand State of Connecticut, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Railway Tie Plates, of which the following is a specification.

This invention relates to a novel and practical construction of railway tie plate employed between the rail and ties of the roadbed, and has primarily for its object a tie plate construction designed satisfactorily to combine an efiicient rail support and a maximum of holding power with a minimum of damage to the tie.

its is well known to those familiar with track conditions, the combination of forces acting upon the head of the rail tends to d salignment and spreading of the rails, requiring constant care and attention in mainte nance to prevent and correct these undesirable conditions. That is to say, owing to the wheel load acting vertically and the wheel flange thrust-acting horizontally on the head of the rail the resultant of these combined forces is a factor which must be taken into consideration in the design and development of track equipment,sucl 1 as rail joints and railway tie plates. Furthermore, various expedients and forms of construction have beendesigned to protect the fibers of the wood in the tie, and also to provide a more satisfactory and stable bearing for the rail base than is obtainable when the rail rests directly upon a wooden tie. These efforts have included experimentation with various forms and designs of tie plates, but very few of such structures have definitely provided means for effecting a reductionof maintenance labor costs for re-gauging and holding aligmnent of the track, and as a matter of fact many forms of tie plates pro posed and in use, in giving.special'attention or stress to the function of gauge holding have entirely disregarded the feature :of tie protection, in fact providing constructions which accelerate instead of retard the destructon of the ties.

Accordingly, the present invention has taken into consideration these various established requirements in track building and, track maintenance so as to provide a tie, plate structure which gives to the rail a correct and stable seat in harmonywlth the general 19-24. Serial No. 725,053.

direction of the resultant of the forces imposed on the rail head, and which provides a maximum of holding power laterally and longitudinally "with a minimum of damage to the tie.

Also, a general object-of the invention is to provide a novel design of, railway tie structure, embodying in a practical combina tion, features which are so coordinated as to give durability to the tie plate, to eliminate the danger of breakage, to reduce buckling to a minimum, andtofarrest corrosion in the metal.

\Vhile susceptible of some structural modification as to details without departing fromthe spiritor scope of the invention, the same preferab y consists in the novel combination and arrangement; of parts hereinafter more fully described, illustrated and claimed.

A preferred and practical embodiment of the invention is shown in the accompanying drawings, in which:

Figure 1 is a top plan view of a railway tie plateembodying the improvements contemplated by" the present invention.

Figure 2 is an end view thereof.

Figure 3 is a vertical cross-sectional view of the improved tie plate and a rail-joint structure seatedthereon, said view also showing the tie plate seated on and spiked to a tie; the lineof section acrossthe tie plate being indicated by the line 33 on Figure 1.

Figure 4; is a side elevation of the tie plate shown in 2, the dotted lines indieating the sides of the tie engaged by the downward fiangesof the tie plate body.

Similar reference characters designate corresponding parts throughout-the several figures of the drawings.

In carrying forward this invention the active seat for the rail is designed to meetthe varying trafiicconditions, while the tie engaging parts of the structure are designed to attain a maximum of holding power with a minimum of damage to the tie, and, in the latter functioning, to interlock the plate to the tie in such amanner that the plate will be anchored against movement in any direction, thereby providing an efficient anchor to which the rail joint bars maybe fastened through the medium of the track spikesso that the rail firmly will be held against an .preciable longitudinal creeping, dispensing in most locations of track with the use of individual or supplementary rail anchors.

Referringto the particular embodiment of the invention shown in the drawings, for carrying into effect the features above particularized, it will be seen that the body of the tie plate designated by the numeral 1 preferably is of the usual rectangular configuration and may be formed by any of the usual processes such as by rolling, forging or casting. Regardless of the method of producing the ultimate structure the tie plate body 1 is characterized by having formed at its upper side a flat rail supporting seat extending from end to end of the plate body and preferably comprising a plurality of spaced bearing surfaces a, b and c respectively located at the outer, medial, and inner portions of the seat which is spanned and engaged by the rail resting on the tie plate. These seating or bearing surfaces a, b and 0 preferably are of difierent widths in order to accommodate the bases of two different rail sections, for instance 90-lb. and llO-lb. rail, there being shown in the drawingsby way of illustration, 90-11). A. R. A. rail.

The rail seat is preferably, as shown, slightly inclined so that the higher part of the said seat is disposed toward the outer edge of the plate in conformity with that practice which provides for a predetermined canting of the rail, preferably on curves, but irrespective of that use of the invention it will be noted that the rail is given a solid seating on substantial bearing surfaces as, b and 0 so that a solid part of the tie plat-e structure may receive and distribute any undeflected vertical load forces, as well as defiections of the vertical load caused at times by lateral wheel thrusts which is the result of certain conditions of track and rolling stock familiar to railroad engineers.

The result of producing the separate raised rail seating portions a, b and c on the top surface of the tie plate is to provide between those portions of the rail seat the intervening spaced clearance channels or grooves 2 and 3. The channels or grooves 52 and 3 act as scavenging grooves to permit of the discharge of water, sand and grit from the bottom of the rail bases thereby reducing abrasion and increasing the life of the tie plate. Also the grooves 2 and 3 serve to reduce the weight of the plate, this being made possible because of the stiffening effect of the downward flanges at the ends of the plate as hereinafter referred to.

Toward the outer edge portion of its body the tie plate is provided with a longitudinally aligned series of spaced abutment lugs or shoulders 4. against which the outer edge of the rail flange is held, and between these spaced abutment lugs 4 the tie plate body is pierced by the track spike openings 5. A practical feature of the structure also resides in forming the tie plate body, within the vertical longitudinal plane of the inner portions of the spike openings 5, with the reinforcing and holding rib 6 having a shallow projection below the bottom of the tie plate body. As best seen from Figure 3 of the drawings the rib 6 lies in the vertical longitudinal plane of the outer part of the rail seat portion a and also preferably overlaps the vertical longitudinal plane of the inner portions of the spike slots 5. This combination and relation of features is of practical importance because under con-ditions where the inclined resultant of the applied forces on the rails, passes, as it usually does, through the outer flange of the rail the combination of forces thus directed to the outer rail seat portion a has a substantial reinforced portion 6 of the tie plate body through which to pass, causing a greater compression of the fibers of the tie along the line of the rib 6 than at the outer edge portion of the tie plate. This tends to restrain the outer edge of the tie plate from cutting the ties. This phase of the invention involves forming the rib 6 with a rounded or blunt surface so that the seating of the plate on the tie will be by compression, instead of by cutting the top fibers of the wood as prevails with many types of tie plates now in use.

In order uniformly to carry out the feature of a tie embedment of the plate by compression rather than by actually cutting the top fibers of the woo-d, the tie plate body is provided within the vertical longitudinal plane of the inner edge portion of its rail seat with ashallow blunt reinforcing and holding rib 7 corresponding, in its tie engagement function, with the outer one of the said ribs 6 above described. Also, the inner one of the bottom ribs, which may be preferably referred to as a tie compression rib, is disposed in the vertical lon tudinal plane of the inner portions of the duplex spike slots 8 which are located in proper position at and adj acent the edge of the inner rail seat portion 0 so as to reinforce the part of the tie plate engaged by the track spikes 9. It will be observed that the spike slots 8 which have been term-ed duplex spike slots each consist of a single relatively large opening having an intermediate offset which gives to the inner and outer portions of the opening different locationsin the plate, and producing two spike slots which respectively receive the spikes for the smaller and larger rail sections, according to which of the two different rail sections is seated on the tie plate.

The importance of the part of the invention above referred to resides in the combination between the tie plate and the rail joint bars 10 to provide a. complete locking of the rail oint, at the joint locations, to the tie plate through the medium of the spikes as shown in Figure 3 of the drawings. This serves to securely hold the joint bars to the ties in such a manner that an efiieient rail anchor is provided dispensing with separate rail anchor devices at and near the rail joint locations; and, it will be observed that where the tie plate receives the spikes the same is substantially reinforced by the ribs 6 and 7 so that undue strains placer on the plate in the spike slot positions due to tendency of the rail joint to pull away from the tie plates will not tend to break the latter.

In connection with the function of the tie plate structure in having a inaxin'ium of holding; power with a minimum of damage to the tie, the said plate is provided alt its opposite end portions with the depending abutment and holding flanges 11. These flanges are preferably of uniform depth and may or may not extend entirely across the ends of the plates from one side edge to another, the same acting as reinforcing girders which materially stiffen the plate. Each of said flanges 11 is preferably provided with a downwardly and outwardly sloping inner face or bevel 12 which is adapted to have a tight wedging engagement with the side face of the tie, at the same time adapt ing' the flange 11 to slight variations in the width of the tie. The effect of the two oppositely located abutment and holding flanges 11 which project to a substantial distance downward at opposite sides of the tie is to securely lock the tie-plate structure against longitudinal movement, that is, in

the direction of the length of the rail, while the compression ribs 6 and 7 by embedment in the top surfaces of the tie plate act to hold the tie plate againstmovement in a transverse direction, that is, transversely of the rail bottom or longitudinally of the tie. This combination of features results in anchoring the tie plate against movement in any direction so that it becomes a secure foundation or base to which may be anchored rail joint bars by the medium of the spikes 9 which not only engage the openings 5 and 8 of the tie plates but also the spike slots or notches 9 of the rail joint bars.

From the foregoing it will be seen that the top part of the tie plate structure so designed as to provide for a correct seating of the rail base thereon, and preferably to assimilate loading strains either deflected or undefiected, while the bottom part of the structure is corelated to the rail seat in a manner to provide proper reinforcement therefor in the most desirable locations as well as to attain what has herein been referred to as the maninnu'n of holding power with a minimum of damage to the tie. These functions are effectually perforn'ied by the features of construction described and it is thought that these ill he understood without further description; also that changes in the form, proportion and minor details of construction may be resorted to without departing from the spirit or sacrificing any of the advantages of the invention.

I claim 1. A construction for tie plates including a bodyprovided at its upper side with a canted rail seat and at its lower side with a pair of spaced tie-compression ribs which are spaced apart a distance corresponding at least to the width of the rail seat, said body being further provided at its end edges with downward reinforcing girders disposed longitudinally of the tie and formed with inner tie engaging faces.

2. A construction for tie plates including the body provided at its upper side with a canted and channeled rail seat and at its lower side with a pair of spaced blunt tiecompression ribs spaced apart a greater distance than the width of the rail base fitting the rail seat, the said body being further provided at its end edges with downward reinforcing girders disposed longitudinally of the tie and formed with inclined inner faces adapted to engage the side faces of the tie.

In testimony whereof I hereunto my signature.

JULIUS KRUTTSCI-INITT. 

